Now spring has sprung, I feel I should start my annual spring clean in my chambers. I call it “My Annual Spring Clean In My Chambers”.

Yes, court fans, it is time to start carrying a duster round with me and do away with anything looking scruffy and old. And there’s no shortage of dead wood lurking in Liverpool crown court. They’re often called lawyers.

I often think, as I’m doing a particularly challenging Sudoku in court, that there’s no better way of spending an afternoon than clearing out the rubbish. I’m all for a bit of dusting. I often keep a duster under my wig and hope I don’t swap them round when I’m in court. My old sniffer dog, Woofley, often leaves a trail of hairs, half-eaten bones and other unmentionables which need cleaning up.

I am not alone. As Bolshevik Leon Trotsky rather loquaciously put it in his 1919 essay Rubber Gloves and Red Armies, our ultimate aim of world revolution cannot fully take place until we ave eliminated all opponents, inculcated a shift in the State’s political psyche, and tidied the living room.

He is not alone. The powers that do - that’s decorators to you - have decided to give the old courts a lick of paint. They are 23 now (the courts, that is: the decorators are even more decrepit) and need a lick of paint like cheese needs pickle.

They are not alone. The decrepit decorators have gone all Picasso on us. When he had his Blue Period. They bought up the brightest blue in B & Q. Taking my first steps into court 4:1 this week to borrow a cup of sugar from the Recorder of Liverpool, left me fumbling for my Ray Bans. The whole place has turned a strange shade of cornflower. That’s blue to you peasants. Actually a peasant would know that, working in a field all day. Or you might even call it cobalt. That’s Co to you scientists. The oddest thing is the newly carpeted floor no longer ends at the skirting boards. It climbs the wall, casting a vivid blue hue. Is it therefore technically a floor? More sleepless nights to follow as I ponder this important question...

The carpet is not alone. Many’s the time when I have been laid out flat in the courtroom, looking at psychedelic colours and climbing the walls. As Trotsky said (and this was a man who knew his Shakespeare): “Is that an ice axe I see before me?” And apparently it was.

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